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A comment on Amazon Says It Has Over 10k Employees Working on Alexa, Echo. Parent comment

Re:Amazon Says It Has Over 10k Employees Working on Alexa, Echo by ekianjo on Sunday January 06, 2019 @07:17PM (#18841683)
if its technically possible to do it without you knowing then all that is left is how much you trust Amazon with that. Note that Amazon may have to surrender its devices access to three letters agencies for random reasons as well. You have to live with that assumption.
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Re:Amazon Says It Has Over 10k Employees Working on Alexa, Echo by JaRail on Sunday January 06, 2019 @07:47PM (#18841846)
It's widely understood how the wake-word system works. You can monitor how much data is being uploaded and when. So no, it's not possible to just stream everything you say undetected.
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Re:Amazon Says It Has Over 10k Employees Working on Alexa, Echo by pvorb on Sunday January 06, 2019 @08:56PM (#18842149)
I believe 99 percent of Alexa users wouldn't notice the increased data usage. If "three letter agencies" carefully choose who they spy on, it might go undetected for a very long time.
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Re:Amazon Says It Has Over 10k Employees Working on Alexa, Echo by discodave on Sunday January 06, 2019 @10:17PM (#18842496)
If a three letter agency is interested in you then you would be lucky if your Alexa is the best bugging device they have.
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Re:Amazon Says It Has Over 10k Employees Working on Alexa, Echo by marcinzm on Sunday January 06, 2019 @07:27PM (#18841734)
Sure. But most people trust corporations with almost all their private correspondences, photos, internet browsing history, shopping behavior, etc. So at that point how much is there to lose by adding everything you say into the mix as well?
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Re:Amazon Says It Has Over 10k Employees Working on Alexa, Echo by stuart_marshall on Sunday January 06, 2019 @08:25PM (#18842021)
Some companies, notably Google and Amazon, have maintenance of customer trust as a core principle. This seems to be working. Generally, people trust a lot of their private data to these companies and the companies do not abuse it.

Microsoft believes in this too, but had to learn the hard way back around 2000 that customer trust matters a lot.

Facebook seems to have had a harder time learning this lesson. Perhaps they've learned it now, but it'll take a while before consumers really believe it.

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